As Long As I Breathe

Thursday, 15 November 2018

My mother looked directly at me when she said this. She was in her
right mind. She didn't have Alzheimer’s. She didn't have dementia. She knew
what she was saying and meant what she said.

I felt abused. I was accused.

She made me cry again. Inside.

(lipstick-on-a-pig)

My mother lived during the winters in a tired trailer tucked in my
sister’s back yard. It had a miniature everything: a microwave, a stove, a
refrigerator, a dinette set, and a recliner. We had a sturdy, covered wood
porch built outside its rickety aluminum door. I sewed and hung colorful
curtains and made a matching bedspread. We made it as pretty as possible but it
still looked like an old pig decked out in lipstick.

The trailer had a tiny bathroom with a sink and a shower with hot and
cold running water. But the toilet couldn’t be hooked up to the sewer so brown
water drained via a hose onto my sister’s lawn. My sister thought it would be
okay if the toilet flushed into her 'organic' vegetable patch as well. I didn’t.

(Nature's-head-composting-toilet)

So we bought this composting toilet from Amazon for my mother to use
while she lived in the trailer.

Now the concept of a composting toilet was a beautiful thing. Leave no footprint. Recycle. Save the world. The toilet looked
quite regal when it came out of the package. Before it was used.

It had a front tank to catch pee and a pod in the back for poo. It
became my job to empty it when I cleaned her trailer which I did every week or
more: top to bottom, front to back, every drawer, every crack.

Glaucoma had robbed my mother of her ability to see more than a few
feet away. It was impossible for her to maintain sanitation when she couldn't see grime on
the floor or slime in the sink, and hoarding food became one of the few
remaining ways she tried to maintain control over her life.

I found chicken bones in her
pockets, moldy cheese in the drawer with her bras, and tired tomatoes inside her shoes in the closet. Milk soured and separated into curds-and-whey in the cupboard while baby
maggots hatched in the trash. These things didn’t bother me. She was my mother
and my job was to keep her clean and safe from herself.

Someone needed to save me.

I found two half-full paper cups of apple juice in the kitchen sink
when I began my cleaning. I picked up one cup. I loved apple juice and I thought
that’s what it was. I opened my mouth. Tidbits swirled at the bottom of the
cup. Maybe it was unfiltered apple cider? Yum. I took a whiff one millisecond
before I gulped it down. The juice wasn’t cider. It wasn’t juice at all.

My mother’s pee was in the cup. I screamed with panic. I shrieked. I
yelled.

“Why did you pee in a cup and leave it in the sink for me? I almost
drank it!”

“I usually dump it out before you get here. You were here early today.”

“Why did you pee in a
cup?”

“It’s easier to go in a cup then in the toilet when I get up in the
middle of the night.”

“Mom! Use the toilet! That’s what it’s for!”

(Esquire-transpotting-toilet)

The coup de grace of my cleaning day was the composting toilet: dump
the pee tank, rinse, add bleach and rinse again, hang it out in the sun. Disconnect
the poop pod, haul it into the berm of the yard, spread out a tarp, keep the
chickens from investigating and pecking at the nuggets, scrape, retch. Disconnect
the hand mixer, the one that stirs poo into the composting soil in the pod,
scrape it with a stick. My mother takes Lactulose, Colace, and Miramax so the poo
goo sticks to the pod and mixer.

Keep the dog from licking the poo splooge, oops, yuck, chain her up. Set
the pod under the UV’s of the sun, stretch out my aching back, soak the block
of fresh compress, break it up into chunks. Chase away the goat after it jumps
the fence not once but three times, note the black smears on my shirt and pants,
heave, gag …

I was a retired RN and was used to disgustingly putrid odors and muck but this
- this was too much.

Through soiled grass stubble, my mother walked up to me before I was
done and said. “You haven’t been my daughter since you left the Message.”

I was drenched with sweat. I stank of excrement.

My parents raised me in a misogynistic pseudo Christian religious cult.
I found it impossible to live with prejudice and condemnation against everyone
who didn’t believe exactly the same as the beliefs taught in the cult. I
refused to pass on a heritage of fear and grief to my children. My choices were
to leave or die. I left.

I choose to believe in a Christ of joy and hope and the truth of His unconditional
love.

I looked at my mother. Her once dark brown eyes were clouded over with
the ravages of age. I looked past her
bent frame, her white hair, fragile skin, wrinkled face, dark spots discoloring
the backs of her hands. I pictured her as she once was, holding me in her arms,
sewing me my very own dress I didn’t have to share with my two older sisters, and
telling me the black and white puppy was all mine.

(Shutterstock)

Years later, she looked past my son’s missing arm and accepted Adam as the
special child he was. She was his only grandparent who did. For her kindness to my little elf boy, I would always be thankful
to her.

It would take me a while, but I would forgive her. Again.

I peeled off my mask, removed my gloves, rolled them into one another, and
tossed them into a trash bag. I heaved a few deep breaths, whispered a prayer for
patience, looked into my mother's angry eyes, gave her a hug and said, "Mom, I forgive you."

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